The domains I am interested in are very small and/or local. How can SpyFu help me?

Looking at the larger domains in the same industry can give you an idea of strong keywords and ad copy to use for SEM/SEO. You can also add keywords to SpyFu that we don’t already search. Longtail and niche-focused keyword can help us find smaller domains. Local phrases like “Sacramento weight management” can help us give you better answers in the future.

Why is there a full month of data missing from a historically strong keyword?

If that happens it means that in those months, we didn’t see any ads displayed when we searched our keyword. This is different from not getting any data for that month. In fact, you can click on the cache page link next to the keyword (on the results page) to see the actual Google page we saw. In those cases, there will be no ads.

I know that I rank on more/fewer words than what you have listed. What’s going on?

More: If you know you rank on more, there could be more than one explanation. Any one of these could apply:

Some of the terms that you rank on might not be in our list of the millions of search terms that we run each month. You can fix that easily. SpyFu subscribers can add new keywords to our database, and we’ll start searching them the following month.

It is one of our terms, but your site didn’t show up any of the times we searched. This could have happened because the site did not rank high enough on that term (within the first 2 pages of ads) or, if it was late in the day, your ad budget could have been used up.

The domain might have just started advertising this month, and we are still collecting the data.

Or if you think you rank on fewer keywords: If you think there is no way you rank on a certain term, consider this. We keep old ads in our system, so if you ranked on an ad last year we still have it. Let’s say that you didn’t expect to rank on “art supplies,” but we show that you do. Here is how you can see where we made the connection:

Click on that term (or just search for “art supplies” in SpyFu) to get to its page.

Verify that you see your domain in the list of advertisers on that term’s page (You might have to click on “view more.”)

Click on “View Cached Page” in the term stats to see the actual downloaded Google page for further verification.

Also, “broad match” could be the culprit. Read the article “Using SpyFu Kombat to Highlight Negative Keywords to Trim the Fat” for more on this occurrence.

Why don’t you show any results for the domain I entered?

When we collect data, we start with a set of millions of keywords and collect the domains that appear on them–both paid results and natural/organic results. If we don’t have any results to show when you search a domain in SpyFu, it’s because that domain did not appear as a result at the time that we ran our keywords. These are the most likely explanations:

The domain might not rank in the top 50 natural/organic results for any of the keywords in our database.

The domain did not appear on the first 2 pages of paid results/ads.

It’s important to remember, the domain did not appear as a result at the time that we searched for a particular keyword. Read the next answer for a more detailed explanation.

How accurate is SpyFu?

We think it’s the most accurate, best-in-class SEM data available without drilling right into your Adwords account.

Every point about ranking or advertising that you see on SpyFu — every ad, every organic rank — can be traced back to a specific Search Engine Result Page *(SERP)* that we saw on Google. We keep a screenshot of every single one going back over 9 years to when we first started collecting data. It helps us back up what we say.

The figures like costs, search volume and number of clicks are estimates that come from other sources. This video gives better details about how we get that data.

I added new keywords. What happens next?

Your added keywords appear across the SpyFu site and in Recon Files reports. If you add them in the first half of the month, we can start searching for them with enough time to roll them out in the following month’s results. For example, add them by January 12, and we should have them in to roll out the first week of February. Add them January 17 for example, and you will see those keywords and their results at the beginning of March.

Can you manage my SEO/PPC campaign for me?

Sorry, no. We support the SEO and PPC pros who make those campaigns happen. Our expertise is behind the scenes: uncovering competitive insights that will help you make the right call so your campaign is successful.

Do you track any other search engines, or only Google?

We added Bing/Yahoo results to the weekly tracking updates. This special feature rounds up Bing and Google rankings on SEO keywords that you select in the Recon Keyword Ranking Reports or the PPC or SEO keywords that you choose in the Weekly Tracking feature.

The massive keyword database that we use to pull data into the site’s features like domain overview, keyword overviews, Kombat, Ad History and special domain reports comes from Google only.

Can I use SpyFu for data in Australia? Canada? Any other country?

Since we show data for Google.com and Google.co.uk, we tend to capture some domains from other countries when they rank high enough in the results we show. However, we don’t have full results for any countries outside of US and UK.

What we get is national data for the US and national data for the UK. These are not geo-targeted or broken down by specific areas.

How did you get your information and how often do you update it?

We get our information from Google, showing data from Google.com for US results and Google.co.uk for UK results. We do not collect data from Bing or Yahoo.

We update our data on SpyFu.com and SpyFu Recon Files once per month.

The most recent month is collected and given a name (everything that happened throughout March is called 03/01), and it rolls out to the site the following month. This usually happens in the first week. March results would appear toward the beginning of April.

Why is the daily ad spending for my company so different than it actually is?

The daily spend that we show is an estimate of a domain’s AdWords spending. It doesn’t include their budget for display ads or search ads that run on other sites. Estimated budgets help size up a competitor or potential client and give you a good baseline for comparing domains.

In this video, we give a pretty detailed explanation of how we work with that data and what happens when we’re wrong.

What about an ad budget without keywords?

There is a rare case where you might find a domain with an ad budget, but when you click through to find recent keywords, there are none.

This is due to a safety net we put into place with our ad budget calculations here at SpyFu. We don’t want to rush to conclusions about a domain when we don’t find any keywords for it. While a domain can suddenly turn off all ad spend at any time, that might blink off of our radar for a second but then come back strong next month. We trend a domain’s ad budget to zero over a 4 month period. Our intention is to smooth out the data to account for any hiccups.

At the time this article is being written (August 2016) we are also making major improvements to our data collection, which should improve data quality, reduce hiccups, and possibly eliminate or reduce the need for stat smoothing.

How long does it take to run a Recon report?

How do I cancel?

Let us know via email at support@spyfu.com, live chat, Twitter (@SpyFu) or phone if you’d like to cancel. We can end your subscription right there and confirm the cancelation for you. You can also use the “subscription” link in your account drop down menu.

How can I upgrade my subscription?

Look for the upgrade button in the upper right of your home page dashboard just below your user name. You don’t have to wait for the end of your subscription cycle, either. Drop us a line in live chat for help, and we can prorate your current month’s payment toward your new plan.

How much money will I need to spend to compete in my market?

Determine your closest competitors, and open their domain page. Here, we show you their estimated daily ad spending.

You will also want to determine if their strategy is similar to the strategy that you can afford to use. You can be a small competitor and still thrive alongside a behemoth advertiser, but you would never be expected to duplicate their budget.

Review a domain’s Ad Percentile, Average Ad Position and Average Ad Competitors to highlight their track record in ranking. You will be able to spot advertisers with tight, disciplined strategies vs. those that are winging it. That helps you determine how responsible they are with their budget which in turn shows how flexible you can (or should) be in emulating them.

How many domains and keywords can I search with SpyFu?

You can search as many domains or keywords as you’d like on SpyFu, as often as you’d like, for as long as you’d like. (No timed trial that runs out.) When you search with a premium membership, you can also export the full list of results without restrictions.

Sometimes when you enter a keyword into SpyFu, it returns with zero keyword results. This video explains why that might be, and what you can do to remedy it. Video Transcript: SpyFu Tracks Millions of keywords across the web, but as you now see it’s tough to catch them all. That’s…

Sometimes when you enter a domain into SpyFu, it returns with zero domain results. This video explains why that might be, and what you can do to remedy it. Video Transcript A question we sometimes get at SpyFu is, “I typed in my domain, but I’m not showing up on your site!” Sometimes…